


Before Our Hells (There Was This)

by Yenneffer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Family Drama (isn't is always with those two?), Gen, Gen Fic, POV Second Person, Preferably-Not-Sam’s-If-Only-The-Bitch-Stopped-Interfering, Season/Series 04, family dysfunction, post-hell trauma, type Dean-Will-Love-Sam-To-Death mental condition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 14:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yenneffer/pseuds/Yenneffer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the reason: Sam was the only constant, a high and an aim in this Winchester-functional home you had (used to have).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before Our Hells (There Was This)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: It's not my sandbox. All hail Kripke!

The reason it – _you_ – is as it is is that your whole life (growing up like you did, you know?) you were entangled together:

Sam was the only constant, a high and an aim in this Winchester-functional home you had ( _used to_ have).

You don’t blame anyone for this, hell (the force with which the word wrenches itself from your throat, against your will, says, “ _but you do_ ”), this is just how your life turned out to be. Nothing else to say.

This is the real thing, and you have proved to yourself – once, remember that bittersweet unreality? – that you wouldn’t have it any other way.

[after all, you were the only one that needed

convincing

You say a lot – and often – about family, but what is it that you really know about love? The one you speak of is the one without words ( _there aren’t any_ ), a tough little thing that constricts under the weight of two (sometimes, when you wake, you know there is too little space for the both of you, that one of you should leave. This is when you wish you could wake up again just to tell yourself – another lie, what’s the difference? – it was only a dream).

Yet Sam remains everything that is worth something in your life, so you hold on to him. You’re both the very definitions of words. Sam _is_ everything. You _are_ the one holding on.

(You carefully don’t say you are unworthy of him

-it’s not like he or you don’t know that)

It’s selfish, probably, but so is he; you both learn from one another, morphing harder into the dysfunctional family you have always been, sigils left by cold ashes that burnt deeper than skin, into the bones, sinews and blood−

[whatever the latter  may mean these days

As far as selfishness go, you will always strive to outdo the other.

(how many levels down are there?)

This is how you speak: firm fists and desperate, unyielding words that hurt even more (but who?), this is a language that you use to protect him; it’s the tough love, the one that lashes out, something no woman nor man who was not a Winchester could possibly understand.

The origins of this language are your history, full of stale and stifling walls in motel rooms, purifying lines of salt and the well-known shotgun handles placed into the hands of a boy who knew too much by the always-disappearing figure of a father.

You don’t go around blaming anyone for how your life turned out; no need for normal now when there was never any around.

It is just what it is.

**Author's Note:**

> I am pretty nervous about this fic: it is the first thing I have written in quite a long while. I've had half a mind to call it a Recovery fic, and not because of Dean, either (well, a little. Poor sod).  
> I really hope it's not too horrible.


End file.
